Dave Hobson

Mr. HOBSON

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me say this to the gentleman, I am sympathetic to the amendment, and we will probably take the amendment. I want to tell you, though, that we have some problem with what we are doing in this bill when we begin to get into this sort of regulatory adjudication process. I do not think this is the right way to go. I understand the frustrations with Enron. I do, I think most people do, but I think we really need to let the agencies do their job. But I want you to understand we are going to take the amendment. It may need a little tinkering with as we go through the process. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I think I said this to Mr. Hefley maybe last year. He follows in some great footsteps in offering this amendment, in my opinion, because part of my district used to be represented by Clarence Miller from Ohio, and Clarence Miller I think had the distinction of either 1 percent or 10 percent, Clarence, when he was here doing this. He is still alive and very active, but I reluctantly think that we have already got too many problems in this bill on trying to fund things adequately. So I would oppose this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky).

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, if I might respond, you have got the problem correct and we are sympathetic to the problem because it is an economic development tax revenue situation that they do not seem to want to recognize. We have this both in the waterways there and renourishment programs, the dredging of some of these smaller harbors as have gone through on another situation. So I am very sympathetic to this. So far, we have not been able to get OMB to go along, but we have a new director of OMB, used to be a Member here, used to live on the Ohio River. Maybe he will understand it better than the other OMB directors we have.

Mr. HOBSON. We are going to do that. Amendment Offered by Mr. Flake

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Unfortunately, Mr. Davis had a prior commitment and couldn't be here tonight, because we didn't know what time these were going to come up to defend this. We review these within the committee and we looked at his request, and I am here to say that he met those tests. But as far as the oversight on these things, there are project officers within the agencies. We want to fund science research wherever we can, and there are things like inspectors general who go out and look at these projects and make sure they are done right. If people don't like them and they are not done right, then they report back, and we take appropriate action. So Mr. Davis got a small earmark for this. I might say my frustration is that, earlier this evening, I tried to cut $25 million, to keep $25 million out of this bill that went to little grants that we have no control over, and I wasn't able to do that. The will of this House was to fund that program for $25 million. So I share some of the gentleman's frustrations. I don't particularly share it about this one, but I share it about a $25 million deal out there, which is probably larger than some of the cuts you are trying to do tonight. So I am maybe more frustrated than you are at the moment. Mr. Chairman, do I have any time left?

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the ranking member.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons).

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons).

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. The subcommittee does do oversight of appropriations. There were 313 days of hearings, 161 volumes. We heard testimony from 3,000 witnesses. There are 39 reports. We spend an awful lot of time on oversight, and somehow earmarks have become the thing of the day. But I have to tell you I spend a lot of time on billions of dollars of overruns and cost allowances on administration projects such as Hanford and other things. We spend time on these. Each of these goes through a process at the end and they are looked at and they are done. I understand the concern about the numbers of earmarks. We have cut ours back. But my committee is divided up into subcommittees and we are out doing oversight. We are trying to rectify some of the problems. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I understand some of the gentleman's concerns and what he stated about what we are doing with the private sector, but I want to relate a little story about a similar earmark from a couple of years ago. I want to tell you how it worked out. One of the sponsors of this project is not here because he is leaving the Congress and he has a dinner, so I am going to fill in for him and tell a little story about how this does work, and it is an analogy of what might be happening here, also. Some years ago, one of the DOE people turned down a product. They did not want to pursue the technology. So we did an earmark to this company. I think we did it a couple of years. The people came to us and said we cannot get into DOE. We have great technology here. The company I think was 3M, a big company. They said we cannot get in the door. So we gave them a little earmark. They pursued the technology and kept talking to DOE. The next thing we hear, we hear DOE saying, guess what, there is this great technology we have just discovered. They had to go through the process we are now talking about for DOE to now look at this process. So they got into it and they said, wow, this really helps on transmission lines in the western part of the United States. We do not have to restring all of these lines. I think it increases three or four times the price and capacity of the lines. This is something that would not have happened if we had not gotten into it. The same way here, the heat pump is something we need further development of. The one thing I would say on this, it attracts corporate dollars. Also, they cannot hide this. They have to share this since it is public dollars. Anything that they develop has to be developed with their competitors, which is good for the economy and good for all of us because we would get it and somebody cannot hold us up for it. I understand the gentleman's concern, but I think in this case, as in the one with 3M, hopefully this will work out to be good for the taxpayers of the country. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I wish I got as much interest from the gentleman and other people on the massive overrun on Hanford, which is $6 billion, and I don't hear a peep out of anybody. I go around, and I scream about it. It is $6 billion. I heard all kinds of people are against a couple hundred million cut we did en masse. I need help in keeping that. Those are the kinds of oversights we need, also. I have not had a massive number of people coming to me telling me of all the failures of the earmarks that he is talking about. I do get some good positives, and if we find out one that is bad we will go after them. We try to monitor them. There are project officers. I oppose the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am a little upset that there is no oversight, because we have tried to do more oversight than I think has been done in a number of years. Let me tell you how these things work in DOE. Each project is assigned a project manager who is responsible to work it out in a contract and the scope of the project and results. I am informed that this particular account also must have matching funds for a project to be awarded or to be made. So there is some oversight for the people who are putting the money into it, too. These projects must be executed according to accounting standards, as in all DOE government awards. These projects are well-known by their sponsors. If we hear of a problem or one of the DOE people comes back to us who is in charge of the project and says this is out of whack, it is not being done right, then we try to take corrective action, too. The assertion that there is no oversight is not correct. In the past, I think there was less oversight than there is today. But I think we have attempted to justify that. We have reorganized our committee in such a way that we are doing more oversight. We will continue to do so. I think the gentleman may have encouraged us to do some more oversight as a result of some of these things, and hopefully that will prove out to be good. I would urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to make one point: In this bill this year, there can be no complaint that we are impeding upon the imperial Presidency's funding levels, because somehow if the President's people fund it, it makes it okay. I don't agree with that. We put headroom in the bill this year that they cannot make that claim anymore. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson).

Mr. HOBSON. Mr. Chairman, might I ask how much time is remaining?